“Spam” in PMs

Well-Known Member

Many of my post recently have been flagged as spam. I’ve noticed a general trend regarding this: typically, it’s because I either posted a picture or sent a link. But over the past couple weeks it has gotten progressively worse. Now, I cannot color text. Just yesterday I was flagged for a random collection of text, which had nothing to do with anything “spammy”.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be much a problem. I can wait for moderator approvals. However, that’s not the case for PMs. On PMs the forum just blocks my response (because moderators cannot acess). This is getting annoying, because on PMs it is literally impossible to:

Post pictures

Send links

Send a url in hope of them copy pasting the link

Sometimes just a random sentence

I imagine this isn’t how a forum is supposed to function. Somehow, my account must have beeen flagged as a spam account. What’s so strange is other people do have the ability to do this. My post count isn’t very high, but I have been here for 6 months and active throughout. I thought by reaching well-known member the problem would clear, but it has not.

I am in an imagineering competition where I must brainstorm within a group PM. Quote a nusisance when I can’t post a picture to explain my idea, or send a link to a google doc for planning. And when it comes time to post the finished product on the forums, often times I will release on time but have to wait a day or two for mod approval, creating a controversy for the judges.

I understand this system is in place for first time “spam” accounts, but this is getting unreliable. At one point can I expect this madness to stop? I am willing to further discuss with the mods on a PM, where I can show examples (don’t want to reveal things to the other team). I don’t know how else to say this... I am not a spam account.

Well-Known Member

I'm wondering if your choice of screen name raised some sort of weird algorithmic red flag that comes off as if you might be facilitating airfare deals.

I know you're not. But maybe the software sees a name like "outboundflight" as potentially spam-my.

Off-topic but...in the early 2000s when I was single, I met my wife through an online personal ad. I posted an attempted funny personal where I pretended there were these "unsolicited testimonials" from women who were satisfied having dated me through the online personal ad. But whenever I altered it, changed a fake testimonial of fixed a typo or anything, it would get taken down because the very phrase "unsolicited testimonial" raised those same kind of red flags, and I'd have to email match or yahoo personals directly to assure them they're joke testimonials if an actual human took the time to read them. Inevitably a human would read them, agree they were not real, and let my personal ad go back up.

Interesting, sending pictures did not lead me to a mod approval this time. I wonder if it's because I'm in forum help. Usually, any link or picture I post leads to a mod approval; attempting to copy paste a link will still lead to a block from the term ".com".

EDIT: Okay, trying this out in my PMs works everytime. I don't know if the moderators did anything, if the system noticed my message here and automatically placed me on its "good side" or pure coincidence but thank you whomever it was!

Interesting, sending pictures did not lead me to a mod approval this time. I wonder if it's because I'm in forum help. Usually, any link or picture I post leads to a mod approval; attempting to copy paste a link will still lead to a block from the term ".com".

EDIT: Okay, trying this out in my PMs works everytime. I don't know if the moderators did anything, if the system noticed my message here and automatically placed me on its "good side" or pure coincidence but thank you whomever it was!

I've solved 2 mysteries - I think. The last time you were awaiting moderator approval (in October) happened to be a time when I was out of town, so it was harder to read all "awaiting moderation" messages.

The other issue is that you only post in one sub forum. Even posters who now spend most of their time in one area started out posting in other forums, or still venture out into other areas from time to time. True spammers have a tendency to limit their spam to only one or two forums, as do those with a specific agenda. Which is why people have to have a certain number of posts before being allowed to post in the Politics and Social Issues forum, for example. Very rarely do scammers scatter posts in multiple forums.